Shalom Brune-Franklin’s latest TV project sees her star with Keeley Hawes & Freddie Highmore in The Assassin

Most of us will never get to experience even an inkling of what it’s like to live like a one percenter. But for a glorious few months last year, British-born, Perth-raised actor Shalom Brune-Franklin got about as close as any of us are likely to get to living like the super rich during filming of her new drama, The Assassin.

The story, created by Harry and Jack Williams (the brotherly creative duo behind Stan’s hit series The Tourist) is all about a retired middle-aged assassin, Julie, played by British actress, Keeley Hawes. She reunites with her estranged son Edward (The Good Doctor’s Freddie Highmore), who has no idea who his mother really is, only for them both to be thrust headlong into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse after Julie’s past unexpectedly catches up with her.

Brune-Franklin plays Eddie’s fiance Kayla, the daughter of a billionaire, who is holidaying on a super yacht off the coast of the Greek Islands when something happens that forces her into their orbit and on the run together — it’s heaps of fun.

“I had wanted to play one of the (super rich) ‘one per cent’ in, like, forever, mostly because of the amazing locations and the things you get to do and wear — and it was just incredible,” says Brune-Franklin, who is chatting to PLAY from her home in London.

“The first two days of filming we were on this beautiful yacht you see in the first episode — I couldn’t complain; it was amazing.

“And then we shot in Athens.”

It was a far cry from the actor’s last experience working with the Williams brothers on The Tourist. That series shot in outback South Australia amidst the flies, the red dirt and the heat, “and not that the Australian outback doesn’t have its charm — I love eating a chicken parmie or a chicken schnitty in a country pub — but Athens had a few more food options, which we were very grateful for!”

Brune-Franklin’s recent stint working in Greece is just the latest in a long line of roles that have taken her to all manner of places, for all manner of projects.

In the past five years, the accomplished actor, who graduated from WAAPA in 2015, leaving Western Australia for Sydney then London, has starred in some of the must buzzed-about shows in the world — and they’ve shot just about everywhere.

In Australia, there was The Tourist and Binge’s acclaimed drama Love Me, then it was over to the UK for roles in Line Of Duty and Great Expectations alongside Olivia Colman. There was time working in Budapest filming last year’s Dune: Prophecy — she’ll return there soon to continue shooting the second season — and she’s just returned from co-starring with Bella Ramsey and Neil Patrick Harris on a film in Scotland.

Prior to that she filmed her role in the TV phenomenon, Baby Reindeer, which also shot in the UK.

With The Assassin already getting plenty of buzz ahead of its premiere, it’s not a stretch to say she’s likely to find herself front and centre in another water-cooler TV moment — and potentially off to other beautiful locations if the show goes to a second season.

“I always just go off the feeling I have when I read the script,” she says of her knack for picking projects that land with audiences.

“If I have this feeling of wanting to inhale it, you can’t go wrong, right?

“And if there’s an amazing group of people attached, you just want to be around those people.

“But I think it’s also just luck …”

Luck doesn’t really seem to play into it — her talent, certainly.

So did she have a sense when signing on to star in Richard Gadd’s self-penned and part-autobiographical Baby Reindeer that it could be something special?

“A thousand per cent,” she explains.

“I had the exact same feeling that I had when I read the Tourist, and (The Assassin) — but with that, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that it was true; that it was someone’s actual experience.

“I kept making jokes to Richard, saying, ‘I think this is going to be the biggest show in the world’, and he was like, ‘we have got to make it first’. But I was like, ‘no, I really have a feeling about this’.

“Or it will completely bomb, but there is no way that that is going to happen, once you get on set and you see the work everyone is doing.

“I mean, how could it not be (incredible) — it was just so interesting.”

All her career success — and all that global jet-setting — has meant a trip back to Perth to visit family has had to be popped on the back-burner, “but hopefully I can get back to Aus at some point,” she says.

“It’s been a while — and I miss Mullaloo Beach. That’s where we moved when we first came to Australia when I was 15, and I still think it’s the best beach in Australia.”

The Assassin premieres Friday July 25 on Stan.